Pre-War and Vintage

[JustinD]

Personal opinion -

As the aging baby boomer collectors pass, there may be a slight boost in prewar in the market but I would not foresee a crash in values. That said, I do not see long term gains exceeding inflation but stability in those values with the occasional couple year blips of ups or downs like history always shows.

Personally, I would be more concerned about shrink in the vintage 50s-60's as the ungraded held quantities are likely vast and those will appear at greater numbers during liquidation of estates. Also, prewar has a miniscule handful of people holding childhood cards of players they watched. The baby boomer generation is core for demand of childhood heroes at the specific moment in that group. The market has much more volume of assets and the growing collectors may very likely not absorb that volume without a value leveling.

Ultra-modern currently is seeing a crash due to overproduction and the shrinking numbers not picking up the slack with growth after the pandemic. We are sitting quite firmly in the second junkwax (and junkslab) era.

[rjackson44]

And the huge loses with the ultra modern scary

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by rjackson44

And the huge loses with the ultra modern scary

Scary but not unexpected

And there is such a demand for pre war that anything that comes to market will be easily absorbed

[lampertb]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Personally, I would be more concerned about shrink in the vintage 50s-60's as the ungraded held quantities are likely vast and those will appear at greater numbers during liquidation of estates.

Agreed. There are probably tens of millions of ungraded '66 Topps cards not yet in the market, to use an example.

[obiwan1129]

Don't discount the damage of natural disasters. There are only so many pre-war cards still around, but as we've seen with wildfires and flooding, many of those collections can be lost forever.

[packs]

This board has a large audience of pure collectors. I don't think any of us would be upset if the vintage market was flooded and prices came down. I can only hope for as much.

[Exhibitman]

https://adamstevenwarshaw.substack.c...start-the-year

According to Card Ladder, prewar it tracks was way up for 2022. Postwar vintage was down 5%.

Not a surprise. Mainstream postwar is 90% demand driven. There is plenty of it available at all times, unless you are looking for PSA 9-10 or a tough regional.

[Fred]

Originally Posted by packs

This board has a large audience of pure collectors. I don't think any of us would be upset if the vintage market was flooded and prices came down. I can only hope for as much.

Did you really type that in this thread? I'm looking forward to the day when the price of cardboard is back to being the price of cardboard and not the price of gold. We can only dream of the big 2023 vintage card price meltdown.

Ok, let's read about how/why that's not going to happen...

[packs]

Is anyone who collects T206s because they enjoy pre-war cards really going to lament the coming hoard of potentially affordable Ty Cobbs?

Or will there be a panic when Ruth Goudeys drop a thousand dollars?

Not for me. That'll be one of my finest hours.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by packs

Is anyone who collects T206s because they enjoy pre-war cards really going to lament the coming hoard of potentially affordable Ty Cobbs?

Or will there be a panic when Ruth Goudeys drop a thousand dollars?

Not for me. That'll be one of my finest hours.

+1. I doubt it happens, but a complete collapse would be awesome. I could build my sets for much cheaper. It would also mean we wouldn’t have the same 3 or 4 money threads ten times a week and would have to find something else to talk about.